Against a backdrop of eye-watering price increases across the board, like everyone else, accountants are experiencing cash-flow pressures. Their small business, landlord and personal clients are also having to deal with significant price hikes, of course, which makes it difficult for accountants to increase their fees and grow their own firm.
So, accountants are having to try to find cost savings, with the added challenge of not diminishing their services and losing clients in the process. Most accountants are acutely cost-conscious. It’s in their DNA. But waste and inefficiencies can build up over time and savings big and small can be made in many areas – some less obvious than others.
Cost-cutting advice for accountants
Reducing marketing spend is a common step for accountants looking to cut costs, but being over zealous can backfire and damage your revenue. You should make the most of lower-cost or no-cost marketing tactics(simply asking your clients to review your services and recommend you to other scan prove effective).
Cutting back on subscriptions and memberships can also save you a few quid, while you may be able to buy less paper, stationery and other office supplies. Even small savings here and there can make a big difference. Preferring video or telephone calls to face-to-face meetings could reduce your travel costs significantly, while saving you time and enabling you to be more productive.
And with prices having risen so considerably, finding ways to use less energy is a no-brainer. Outsourcing non-core business tasks/function scan in fact provide a way to reduce costs and boost your output. Can you get abetter broadband or mobile phone deal? As a general rule, don’t regard any business cost as fixed. Try to negotiate better-value deals with all of your suppliers. Ask them for ways to help you save money.
Allowing team members (including yourself) to work from home more often can reduce your overhead costs. If you have any spare space within your premises, why not rent it out? And a bewildering array of apps can also potentially enable accountants to become more efficient and productive. Much time and money can be saved by harnessing software’s potential to streamline and simplify your processes.
What about accounting software?
When accountants are trying to reduce their costs, they seldom think about accounting software, they stick with the same more expensive accounting software options that they’ve used for donkey’s years. This inertia creates an unnecessary additional cost for accountants and/or their sole trader, micro-business and landlord clients, when accountants could pay less for their accounting software.
Coconut is one such source of accounting software for accountants. Coconut is user-friendly software that was created with the practical needs of freelancers, sole traders, micro businesses and small private landlords (and their accountants) in mind. Offering a range of benefits, your clients will find Coconut simple to use and benefit from – while helping you to cut your costs and streamline/optimise your workflows.
Coconut: what’s the deal?
Accountants can create a partner account for free. Once your clients are set up on the Coconut app, they can connect their business bank account or credit card, so that transactions are automatically entered. This can help them to separate their business/landlord and personal finances, categorise their allowable expenses and better understand/control their cash flow and costs.
Coconut also enables your clients to scan and save their business receipts in the cloud, as well as effortlessly create, send and track invoices. Coconut can also tell them how much to put away each month to pay their annual tax bill.
So, how much does it cost?
● A Coconut pay-as-you-go professional plan costs £7+VAT per client per month.
● Fixed-term agreement (FTA) deals are available if you sign up five or more clients, and these cost just £5+VATper client per month.
● Volume discounts are available:10% for 5-24 clients; 20% for 25-99 clients; 30% for 100-500 clients.
● Starting discounts are also available, for example, a cheaper initial deal on FTA deals for six months to get your clients onboarded.
Turning your clients into Coconut users and fans can also make completing their Self Assessment tax returns much easier, which can save them and you lots of time and effort, while enabling you to earn more from your Self Assessment work. Contact us to set up a call to find out how we can help you and your clients to start gaining from Coconut.
